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Samuel Beckett: A Biography
SAMUEL BECKETT is the first biography of the Nobel Prizewinning novelist and playwright. A monumental work of scholarship - arguably the most important book about Beckett ever published - SAMUEL BECKETT is also fascinating reading. Beckett's life has been as rich as his writing is spare, and Deirdre Bair tells his story the upper-middle-class Irish childhood; the early years in Paris and Beckett's complex relationship to Joyce; the psychological anguish of his apprenticeship, poured out by Beckett in more than 300 remarkable, heretofore-unknown letters to a confidant, Thomas McGreevy; Beckett's heroic service with the French Resistance, also unknown till now; "the siege in the room," that extraordinary period after the Second World War during which Beckett created the first masterpieces that would make him world famous; Beckett's increasing involvement with the theatre and his desperate attempts to guard his privacy against the encroachments of celebrity.SAMUEL BECKETT chronicles Beckett's tumultuous relationship with his family, recounts the psychosomatic illnesses that have often kept him from writing, and traces (where they exist) the autobiographical strains in his work. The book tells of his relationships with publishers, actors, directors, and friends. Above all, it portrays Beckett himself, the poet of despair, the angular, enigmatic artist who, in the words of his Nobel Prize citation, "has transmuted the destitution of modern man into his exaltation."When Deirdre Bair began the research for this book, Beckett said he would not authorize it nor would he read it before it was published. To friends he wrote, "I am sure Mrs. Bair is a serious scholar and is out to do a fine book. I will neither help nor hinder her." After literally hundreds of interviews and years of research in Ireland, England, France, Italy, Spain, Northern Ireland, Canada and the United States, after correspondence with people living on every continent, Deirdre Bair has produced a book that is everything a scholar or a reader could hope SAMUEL BECKETT is one of the remarkable literary biographies of our time.Deirdre Bair received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and worked as a journalist on newspapers and magazines before returning to academic life and taking a M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University. She has taught at Trinity College (Connecticut) and Yale University, and teaches now in the English Department of the University of Pennsylvania. She is married, has two children, and lives in Connecticut.(Taken from the inside jacket material of the First Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Edition, 1978.)
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First published January 1, 1978
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About the author
Deirdre Bair
17 books156 followersDeirdre Bair received the National Book Award for Samuel Beckett: A Biography. Her biographies of Simone de Beauvoir and Carl Jung were finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Simone de Beauvoir biography was chosen by The New York Times as a Best Book of the Year. Her biographies of Anaïs Nin and Saul Steinberg were both New York Times Notable Books.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
March 5, 2025
Deirdre Bair, may she rest in peace, was the first biographer to be permitted by the Master to attempt to infiltrate the impenetrable mist of obfuscation with which he purposefully had always surrounded himself. She was at the time an American former graduate student who lionized his enlightened aura.
She sees Beckett from the outside, being a little wet behind the ears.
Sure, she digs, and in fact was the first to publicly talk of Beckett's certified unstable mental health during and after the War. Beckett's ultimate authorized biographer, James Knowlson, dismissed such claims, though doubtless Bair, in the seventies had able access to interviews with Beckett's wartime confrères.
Hers is an extroverted biography. Perhaps she dug too deep for the writer's liking.
In it, for instance we learn of Beckett’s brief fling with the heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, terminated abruptly by Beckett, apparently, as her sophisticated lifestyle may have driven him close to his Dark Side, of which he was petrified.
In my understanding of his tight-lipped silence on that affair, Beckett's short piece First Love (1946) seems to be a radically symbolic and transmogrified treatment of that ill-fated liaison.
À saint manqué, he always placed a very high value on his privacy.
Neither extremely outgoing or In-dwelling, Beckett - when elderly - placed more faith In fixer-upper physical labour than public literary work, for release.
In his extremely brief work Neither, composed at a later time frame (1976), he spoke of his life as something shadowy. To me THAT'S most revealing. The horrors of WWII had altered him.
We must always move, his narrator says, between inner shadow and outer shadow, at our more centrist moments touching on an ineffable Neither.
That Neither, says his narrator, is our ultimate destination.
At almost 73, I must agree. The Neither is almost ultimate rest: almost but never quite.
It is neither:
From nor toward -
There the dance is -
A condition of complete simplicity
Costing no less than everything. (Eliot, Four Quartets)
Beckett really paid not less than everything -
Living his long, harried life in a state of acute anxiety, fear and trembling.
She sees Beckett from the outside, being a little wet behind the ears.
Sure, she digs, and in fact was the first to publicly talk of Beckett's certified unstable mental health during and after the War. Beckett's ultimate authorized biographer, James Knowlson, dismissed such claims, though doubtless Bair, in the seventies had able access to interviews with Beckett's wartime confrères.
Hers is an extroverted biography. Perhaps she dug too deep for the writer's liking.
In it, for instance we learn of Beckett’s brief fling with the heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, terminated abruptly by Beckett, apparently, as her sophisticated lifestyle may have driven him close to his Dark Side, of which he was petrified.
In my understanding of his tight-lipped silence on that affair, Beckett's short piece First Love (1946) seems to be a radically symbolic and transmogrified treatment of that ill-fated liaison.
À saint manqué, he always placed a very high value on his privacy.
Neither extremely outgoing or In-dwelling, Beckett - when elderly - placed more faith In fixer-upper physical labour than public literary work, for release.
In his extremely brief work Neither, composed at a later time frame (1976), he spoke of his life as something shadowy. To me THAT'S most revealing. The horrors of WWII had altered him.
We must always move, his narrator says, between inner shadow and outer shadow, at our more centrist moments touching on an ineffable Neither.
That Neither, says his narrator, is our ultimate destination.
At almost 73, I must agree. The Neither is almost ultimate rest: almost but never quite.
It is neither:
From nor toward -
There the dance is -
A condition of complete simplicity
Costing no less than everything. (Eliot, Four Quartets)
Beckett really paid not less than everything -
Living his long, harried life in a state of acute anxiety, fear and trembling.
January 7, 2025
“I couldn’t have done it otherwise. Gone on, I mean. I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence.”
He was an impoverished drifter, carrying a massive baggage of existential crises on his shoulders.
He was a cynic. He was the perfect realist. You may even call him a surrealist.
He was a man of few words; unassuming and humane, but aggressive and belligerent when it came to his writings.
He defended and embraced his work as a mother would her offspring.
Very few knew that he had been an active member of a French Resistance group or that he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his role.
Because he detested being in the spotlight;
he abhorred attention.
He rather his work was read by a few who understood, than be put on a pedestal and be depicted and publicized by a majority who misunderstood.
Silence was what he preferred.
At social gatherings, you could find him sitting in a corner, listening to discussions or maybe writing his next elusive prose in his head.
He was an unknown drifter who became one of the famous writers of the world.
He was an icon.
He was awarded Nobel Prize for literature for “a body of work that, in new forms of fiction and the theatre, has transmuted the destitution of modern man into his exaltation.”
He was uncanny, exasperating and provoking.
He was brilliant, extraordinary and beautiful!
He was ‘un inconnu célèbre’.
He was unique!
“When you're in the shit up to your neck, there's nothing left to do but sing.”
I had read a few books by Beckett, before I decided I needed to read his biography. His works are not easy to read and understand and one needs to dig deeper and study the man to be able to appreciate his work. And this version of Beckett’s biography was what I needed. It was thorough and in detail and reading it felt like spending time with Beckett and accompanying him through his ups and downs.
The book begins by Beckett’s childhood and adolescence in Ireland, follows him to France and covers his later life and works up to 1976, 13 years before his death.
In the Tavistock lecture that had such lasting impact on Beckett, Jung spoke of the complexes that form personalities of themselves, appear as visions and speak in voices which are as the voices of real, definite people. Beckett has often called his prose writing a series, with each character supposedly evolving from all the preceding ones. His characters speak with different voices, sometimes assume different names and identities, tell their own stories and sometimes tell the stories of each other. But when the creation of these characters became too upsetting for Beckett, too terrifying because of the exploration and confrontation of himself, he turned to theater as release and salvation. Theater, with its enforced conviviality, required him to live an entirely different kind of life; his plays forced him to take an active role in society. It may not be too strong a statement to say that theater made him whole.
He was an impoverished drifter, carrying a massive baggage of existential crises on his shoulders.
He was a cynic. He was the perfect realist. You may even call him a surrealist.
He was a man of few words; unassuming and humane, but aggressive and belligerent when it came to his writings.
He defended and embraced his work as a mother would her offspring.
Very few knew that he had been an active member of a French Resistance group or that he was awarded the Croix de Guerre for his role.
Because he detested being in the spotlight;
he abhorred attention.
He rather his work was read by a few who understood, than be put on a pedestal and be depicted and publicized by a majority who misunderstood.
Silence was what he preferred.
At social gatherings, you could find him sitting in a corner, listening to discussions or maybe writing his next elusive prose in his head.
He was an unknown drifter who became one of the famous writers of the world.
He was an icon.
He was awarded Nobel Prize for literature for “a body of work that, in new forms of fiction and the theatre, has transmuted the destitution of modern man into his exaltation.”
He was uncanny, exasperating and provoking.
He was brilliant, extraordinary and beautiful!
He was ‘un inconnu célèbre’.
He was unique!
“When you're in the shit up to your neck, there's nothing left to do but sing.”
I had read a few books by Beckett, before I decided I needed to read his biography. His works are not easy to read and understand and one needs to dig deeper and study the man to be able to appreciate his work. And this version of Beckett’s biography was what I needed. It was thorough and in detail and reading it felt like spending time with Beckett and accompanying him through his ups and downs.
The book begins by Beckett’s childhood and adolescence in Ireland, follows him to France and covers his later life and works up to 1976, 13 years before his death.
In the Tavistock lecture that had such lasting impact on Beckett, Jung spoke of the complexes that form personalities of themselves, appear as visions and speak in voices which are as the voices of real, definite people. Beckett has often called his prose writing a series, with each character supposedly evolving from all the preceding ones. His characters speak with different voices, sometimes assume different names and identities, tell their own stories and sometimes tell the stories of each other. But when the creation of these characters became too upsetting for Beckett, too terrifying because of the exploration and confrontation of himself, he turned to theater as release and salvation. Theater, with its enforced conviviality, required him to live an entirely different kind of life; his plays forced him to take an active role in society. It may not be too strong a statement to say that theater made him whole.
Read
August 26, 2022This is included in my video on Beckett's life and work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teB1U...
February 23, 2012
I remember loving this biography which is detailed and insightful. However one reviewer on amazon (UK) says she 'fails to admit to herself the true extent of Beckett's insanity' - maybe, I don't know.
more notes from my 1983 diary/notebook:
got up to Joyce advising Beckett to use the particular and the personal. Lucia, disintegrating, starting to pay attention to ‘Sam’.
(later) Beckett coming out in ’baby anthrax’ in Dublin, teaching, writing ‘More Pricks than Kicks’ then off to London.
(later) read until 3:30am – he has written Murphy, lived in London, back to Dublin, trip to Germany, finally off to Paris. Catalogue of illnesses, boils etc… getting through the war, writing Watt.
(later) As I read through the biography I seem to know the details already, and, of course, I do from his prose works, More Pricks, the Trilogy, Murphy are all autobiographical… to an extent.
more notes from my 1983 diary/notebook:
got up to Joyce advising Beckett to use the particular and the personal. Lucia, disintegrating, starting to pay attention to ‘Sam’.
(later) Beckett coming out in ’baby anthrax’ in Dublin, teaching, writing ‘More Pricks than Kicks’ then off to London.
(later) read until 3:30am – he has written Murphy, lived in London, back to Dublin, trip to Germany, finally off to Paris. Catalogue of illnesses, boils etc… getting through the war, writing Watt.
(later) As I read through the biography I seem to know the details already, and, of course, I do from his prose works, More Pricks, the Trilogy, Murphy are all autobiographical… to an extent.
January 4, 2012
Persevere! This book has a tough beginning, but how else could it be? It's a reflection of his early life.
The book blossoms the way his life and work did, lightening immensely as he found his own literary voice, and then a measure of success, and then SUCCESS! Even without SUCCESS! his life would be a compelling read. It was filled with oddities, like meeting his life-mate after he's stabbed by a stranger (a pimp), on the streets of Paris. Although she's a musician, she's had nursing experience (!) so was able to keep him from bleeding out until he could get to a hospital.
Common wisdom says the work required to reveal a brilliant diamond is justified by the result. The short excerpts from Beckett's works, and quotes, and letters deliver a taste of his mature wit. His humor and words were spare, with just enough twist to stop you cold with appreciation. Once he stripped away the remnants of his influential mentor, and wrote with his own 'voice' his work became compelling.
Early in the book I found some elements of his childhood so depressing that I put the book down and picked up a romance novel, for relief. Fortunately for me, I returned to Beckett, pushed through the sad bits and found I was rooting for him, involved, fascinated, a little repulsed, but thoroughly captivated and impressed by his mastery and wit.
Deirdre Bair took a tough Subject, and did him justice. I'm intrigued now, enough that I want to read his works, and see his plays. She's a fine, fine writer.
The book blossoms the way his life and work did, lightening immensely as he found his own literary voice, and then a measure of success, and then SUCCESS! Even without SUCCESS! his life would be a compelling read. It was filled with oddities, like meeting his life-mate after he's stabbed by a stranger (a pimp), on the streets of Paris. Although she's a musician, she's had nursing experience (!) so was able to keep him from bleeding out until he could get to a hospital.
Common wisdom says the work required to reveal a brilliant diamond is justified by the result. The short excerpts from Beckett's works, and quotes, and letters deliver a taste of his mature wit. His humor and words were spare, with just enough twist to stop you cold with appreciation. Once he stripped away the remnants of his influential mentor, and wrote with his own 'voice' his work became compelling.
Early in the book I found some elements of his childhood so depressing that I put the book down and picked up a romance novel, for relief. Fortunately for me, I returned to Beckett, pushed through the sad bits and found I was rooting for him, involved, fascinated, a little repulsed, but thoroughly captivated and impressed by his mastery and wit.
Deirdre Bair took a tough Subject, and did him justice. I'm intrigued now, enough that I want to read his works, and see his plays. She's a fine, fine writer.
January 5, 2020
You'd have to be a fan of Beckett to tackle a book this size, and if you are, it will be worth it. Sam was quite the character, loyal, prickly, obnoxious. If you got on his good side, a friend for life, otherwise... His mother was a real piece of work, and the love/hate relationship he had with her probably colored many of his other relationships as well. A fascinating story.
March 10, 2024
While insightful at times, this biography seems bloated by a bit too much minutiae. Written without Beckett's help but with his approval, biographer Deirdre Bair has certainly done her homework. However, as with any "first biograpy," subsequent efforts that adopt different strategies are bound to challenge its authority. Nonetheless, for those who are familiar with the work but not the man, this gives an intriguing glimpse into the influences that resulted in one of the most compelling bodies of work of the 20th century. For example, while interpretations are hardly worth the paper they're printed on (except to the individual doing the interpreting), it is helpful to note that Beckett's seminal dramatic masterpiece, "Waiting for Godot," was written in the wake of WWII, when Beckett's entire milieu in his adopted home of Paris had not only been disrupted but permanently dismantled. This sense of having waited for something that will never recur may, it could be argued, have been one of any number of potential influences that bubbled up, whether consciously or not, as Beckett was writing "Godot." Similar observations abound throughout the book.
Bair has focused heavily on Beckett's early life and middle period, giving the reader progressively less about the passing years as the mid-70s approach. This may be due to a paucity of information, but it feels as if the writer's energies may have been on the wane. Or, perhaps, she was trying to parallel Beckett's own progression from floridity to terseness as his ouvre progressed. And, of course, there is the lack of any information about the last decade of his life for the simple reason that he was still alive and active when this was written and published, despite his prognostications surrounding his own mortality. That having been said, the most glaring omission in a book that traces out the development of Beckett's work in a fair degree of detail is the absence of even a cursory bibliography of his "major" or "notable" works. In today's day and age, this is a trivial matter, and a Google search quickly rectifies this deficit. But in 1978, it may have been frustrating for readers.
Bair has focused heavily on Beckett's early life and middle period, giving the reader progressively less about the passing years as the mid-70s approach. This may be due to a paucity of information, but it feels as if the writer's energies may have been on the wane. Or, perhaps, she was trying to parallel Beckett's own progression from floridity to terseness as his ouvre progressed. And, of course, there is the lack of any information about the last decade of his life for the simple reason that he was still alive and active when this was written and published, despite his prognostications surrounding his own mortality. That having been said, the most glaring omission in a book that traces out the development of Beckett's work in a fair degree of detail is the absence of even a cursory bibliography of his "major" or "notable" works. In today's day and age, this is a trivial matter, and a Google search quickly rectifies this deficit. But in 1978, it may have been frustrating for readers.
February 14, 2025
"Ever tried. Ever fail. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
- Samuel Beckett
I didn't know a whole lot about Samuel Beckett going into this. I have read "Waiting for Godot" and "Krapp's Last Tape," but I have yet to see any performances of his works. For the uninitiated, Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969. An Irishman living in France, he accepted where Jean-Paul Sartre declined. Figured it would be rude not to.
The fact that we share our first names made for some eerie coincidences whilst reading through. He, too, was a most peculiar man, and the parallels between his life and mine... bizarre. But I digress... we're similar but different.
This is not a happy book, but it is a morbidly interesting one.
For a brief overview:
Beckett was kind and charitable to those he knew and liked and could be disturbingly curt with those he didn't.
- Samuel Beckett
I didn't know a whole lot about Samuel Beckett going into this. I have read "Waiting for Godot" and "Krapp's Last Tape," but I have yet to see any performances of his works. For the uninitiated, Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969. An Irishman living in France, he accepted where Jean-Paul Sartre declined. Figured it would be rude not to.
The fact that we share our first names made for some eerie coincidences whilst reading through. He, too, was a most peculiar man, and the parallels between his life and mine... bizarre. But I digress... we're similar but different.
This is not a happy book, but it is a morbidly interesting one.
For a brief overview:
Beckett was kind and charitable to those he knew and liked and could be disturbingly curt with those he didn't.
July 15, 2021
'I first decided to become a writer when I heard Jung give a lecture about a little girl who had died a schizophrenic'because she had never been born, really'".---Samuel Beckett. The late Deirdre Bair pulled off the impossible, writing a biography of Beckett with his cooperation. (This is a man who was tracked down in a cave in Tunisia to be informed he had won the Nobel Prize in Literature.) As anyone who has read his plays or novels could tell you, Beckett the man was as mysterious and shadowy as his characters.
September 29, 2017
An excellent, sensitively-written biography of the great Irish playwright. Strong on his early and middle years but I felt it tapered off towards the end and the last 25-30 years were rushed through. It was the only weakness.
December 3, 2019
a wonderful detailed biography that kept me engaged and wanting to read more and more
August 23, 2021
An incredibly thorough and insightful account of one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. It really does feel like you see the man behind the legend.
June 24, 2022
I honestly cannot imagine this biography being any better than it is. Incredible job by Bair.
March 12, 2022
In depth and fascinating, agonising and slow. Perfect for a Beckett biography
March 30, 2008
I read this book cuz I was doing a report on Samuel Beckett at the suggestion of my brother. I put on Isotope 217 and Radiohead's Kid A on repeat and read this book cover to cover in a matter of days. The angsty teenage blues found their antidote in this obsessive compulsive walker who had a posionous relationship with his overbearing mother. Deirdre Bair does biographies so good!
September 12, 2013
I started reading this after finishing "Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett" by James Knowlson. I was so impressed by Knowlson that I was anxious to see if another biographer could come close to his insight and access. While this is an easier read than Knowlson's book I missed the detail of his efforts and found Bair's a bit flat and to the point. Good in detail but lacking insight.
July 11, 2011
This was a decent biography-- but Deirdre clearly is feeling a bit of hero worship and doesn't get into some of the gritty details of Beckett's life. Read Knowlson's bio instead for an overwhelming amount of detail.
July 3, 2022
Acquired 2003
Gift from Jenn
Gift from Jenn
Want to read
June 19, 2008samuel beckett is a complete mystery to me...i loved endgame...but everything else he's written just makes me itchy...
July 3, 2008
An EXCELLENT Bio of Beckett! I'm not a Bio reader, and this is very readable and interesting.
February 14, 2010
An abomination.
September 10, 2011
Probably the best of the Beckett biographies, and I think I've read them all.
August 22, 2011
I would recommend this to any aspiring writer. I really like how he handled his career. It's also amazing how quickly he went from being a sad loser to Nobel prize. Crazy Crazy life.
August 11, 2012
Superb, illuminating biography of the great Irish writer.
November 7, 2012
Superior to Damned to Fame, but obviously less complete.
November 26, 2015
Bair is the only person I know who ever got close enough to Beckett to find out what motivated him.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews